It really depends on the company, how active they are in R&D, and what they decide to do about it. Case in point are my Mirage speakers. I bought a pair of M5si's in 1996, at the end of that product run. I still use them in the 7.1 home theater system. Last summer I bought a pair of Mirage OMD-15s for the 2-channel system in the living room. Soundwise, the OMD-15 betters the M5si in every way: o Airier, more extended treble o Higher resolution--better nuance and low-level detail o More omnidirectional dispersion pattern o More transparent midrange o Much clearer bass with equal extension (the M-series bass was formidable) Yet the new design is much easier to own as well: o Adjusted for inflation, it costs less o Enclosure has curved walls, improving cabinet inertness o Smaller tweeter improves speed and dispersion o Mirage's patented ribbed elliptical surround enables better bass clarity, extension, and dynamics from a smaller driver (5.5") o M5si was a 51"x14"x8" 85-lb. monolith; OMD-15 is 41"x8"x12" very stylish "lifestyle" column weighing 36 lbs.--Infinitely higher WAF and blends in much better with living space. o OMD-15 is about 7dB more sensitive: M5si needed 150 highly damped watts bi-wired with $1200 worth of cable or more to come alive. I power the OMD-15 with an 85wpc Onkyo integrated with a damping factor of 25. The OMD-15 has better dynamic range at both ends, more clarity and transparency, cleaner, tighter bass, and more resolution overall. In the last 10 years we've seen increasing use of neodymium magnets, curved-wall cabinets, drivers made of diamond, titanium, ceramic, and beryllium, more inert cabinet materials such as birch laminate from Europe, etc. Even Cerwin-Vega has improved to the point that their CLS-215 has received favorable reviews from Absolute Sound and Soundstage. So in many cases, you can get a speaker today that can do things a speaker in that price bracket from 10 years ago could not. |
Concerning the preferences for panels vs. cone speakers:
You could always go for the speaker that has characteristics of both types--the cone speaker-based line array.
Like panels, they are fast and transparent, can have outstanding coherence, and keep the floor and ceiling reflections largely out of the equation. Unlike many panels, they generally present an easier load to the amp, and can play obscenely loud.
And then there's one area where they equal or exceed panels--total lack of WAF, what with the way line arrays' 6- and 7-foot tall columns completely take over a room. You might be able to sneak in the Scaenas IF she likes the bright red and the modern Euro look. |
04-07-09: Ojgalli
Objections to cones
...
metal based tweeters: Use silk domes. Then there's Mirage, who uses a pure titanium dome tweeter with a cloth surround. This combines the pistonic linearity of a very rigid dome with the superior damping of cloth. The Mirage tweeter is sweet and airy, never harsh, and nary a hint of metal harshness or ringing. |
04-08-09: Mrtennis
are you suggesting that a "properly" designed cone system can sound like an apogee duetta signature, sound lab, or magnepan 20.1 ? The goal of any loudspeaker design is not to sound like a panel speaker; the goal is to sound like reality. Since no speaker can sound exactly like reality on all types of musical reproduction, we have to choose the speakers' strong points that appeal to us subjectively, and listen through the ones that detract. Cones and panels have their strong points and weak points. But as has been pointed out, it seems to be easier to mitigate many of cones systems' weaknesses--microdynamics, box resonances, dispersion patterns--than it is to solve the panel speaker problems--difficult impedances, lobing, dispersion anomalies, SIZE, insensitivity, self-cancelling bass, and overall dynamic range. I've listened to Maggie 20.1's back-to-back with Wilson speakers (MaXX 3 and Watt/Puppy 8), and it's the Wilsons that beat the Maggies on transparency, ambience and low level detail. Not only that, the Wilsons can hit live levels of amplitude without cracking up. And there's nary a hint of box resonance. |
04-05-09: Mrtennis
as to faults of cone design, they include the following:
cabinet colorations, lack of driver coherence, stridency of many metal-based tweeters, and crossing over dissimilar drivers Those are not faults of cone design, but of enclosure design, driver selection, and driver integration. All can be corrected and often are. To wit: Cabinet colorations: Increasing numbers of dynamic speakers have curved panels, increased amounts of bracing, and materials other than MDF. The thin-ply birch stock (also used for piano pin blocks) are seeing increasing use. Brands that use this very inert material include Lominchay, Nuforce, and Magico. Lack of driver coherence: Pick drivers with similar rise times and physically align them on the baffle. Stridency of many metal-based tweeters: 20 years ago, maybe. There are plenty of good metal-dome tweeters. The titanium tweeters in Mirage speakers have cloth surrounds, damping out all the ringing and leaving superior speed and linearity without diaphragm breakup. Tweeter materials fall in and out of fashion and have little to do with actual performance IME. Crossing over dissimilar drivers: Use more similar drivers (duh). More and more drivers are made in families. Not only does Mirage use a titanium tweeter, all their cone-based midranges and woofers have vapor-deposited titanium to match the sonic signature. These are all straw man arguments against cones. Some of the best speakers in the world are cones, including the best from Wilson, Magico, YG, Avalon, Vandersteen, Thiel, JM Labs ......., none of which exhibit the "faults of cone design" you mentioned. |
04-13-09: Ojgalli
Alright, enough Mr.T bashing. I wasn't bashing Mr. T. I was using his outdated indictments of dynamic speaker systems to illustrate the very topic of this thread. More cone-based speakers at more price points have reduced or eliminated their glaring disadvantages in the past 10 years. In an earlier post, I mentioned several developments of the past few years that have catapaulted speaker performance over what was affordably available 10 years ago. I mentioned the API/Mirage developments of the Omniguide and their elliptical rib surround, which totally changes the rules on diaphragm diameter vs. cabinet size, bass extension, and clarity. I mentioned increasing use of neodymium magnets and beryllium tweeters. To that I could add that offshoring manufacturing to China has made intricately built enclosures affordable. Basically China has freed us from the box speaker. More and more speakers at affordable prices have elliptical shapes, curved sides, curved tops, and the attendant decrease in cabinet resonances and standing waves. More are getting away from MDF, using polymers, extruded aluminum columns, multi-ply birch from Europe (the stock used for piano pinblocks), and staved construction a la Sonus Faber and Usher. Drivers haven't stood still. Witness the emergence of the ring radiator tweeter, which has found a home in many upscale loudspeakers from Sonus Faber, Magico, and AV123, and the ring ribbon as used by Adagio and Genesis among others. These advances have made their way into entry-level products. Take a look at the averaged anechoic response curve of the $449/pair PSB Image B25 stand-mounted speaker. It is +/- 3dB from 50 to 20KHz, and is about +0, -2dB from 300 to 8 KHz where most of the action is. This level of linearity at this price point IS revolutionary. |
04-14-09: Clio09
If you highly value timbre in a speaker design, you really need to listen to the Audiokinesis Jazz Modules or Dream Maker speakers. In the writeup on its Jazz Module, Audiokinesis writes: Natural timbre arises from smooth frequency response, but to really get the timbre right requires attention to both the on-axis response and the summed omnidirectional response. The summed omnidirectional response is often called the power response and is important because it dominates the spectral balance of the reverberant sound (which in turn dominates the perceived tonal balance in most in-home applications). Its not enough just to get the first-arrival sound right. In the Jazz Modules we have gone to great lengths to also get the reverberant sound right, using a constant directivity waveguide crossed over to a 10" woofer where their directivities converge. Audiokinesis' description confirms my experience at home. I'm a long time owner of Mirage loudspeakers, both from their Bi-polar and Omniguide series. In December 2004 my wife & I got married in the living room of our house. We had live acoustic music for the ceremony and afterwards. A couple months later I brought in a pair of Mirage Omnisats for evaluation for a neighbor's system that I was putting together, and my wife and I marveled at how "real" these speakers sounded. To sound "real" they have to be timbre-correct, and to do that, they have to energize the room as live musicians do. With the recent memory of our wedding, it was apparent that these speakers energize the room (the power response) in this manner. While a loudspeaker can't duplicate the dispersion pattern of every instrument, the latest generation of Omniguide Mirages imitate this pattern *on average*, and it's based on nearly 30 years of research and testing. You get more imaging than the typical omnidirctional speaker because the Mirages throw at least 60% of the energy forward, but--just as with live music--the entire listening area is a workable sweet area with no lobing or venitian blinding artifacts of conventional speaker dispersion patterns. Audiokinesis is obviously on to this phenomenon, as is Mbl, Gallo, James speakers, and a few others. Some of the conventional speaker companies add a rear-firing tweeter on some models (e.g., Snell) to improve timbre accuracy as well. |
04-15-09: Rja
One thing I like is that more manufacturers are finding that MDF is NOT the ONLY suitable material for building excellent speaker enclosures. IMO: It's been a limiting factor. Yes. Wilson knew it all along, but their solution is very exclusive and expensive. We've seen this liberation from MDF elswhere, however, such as extruded curved aluminum cabinets (e.g., Mirage Omnisat FS3), the spun aluminum enclosures of Gallo, and the more widespread use of multilaminate birch stock from Europe, as used by Magico, NuForce, and others. |
04-20-09: Unsound
I'm not convinced that todays speakers provide better value than yesteryears models. Then you need to get out more. :-0 For under $500 you can get speakers with far more resolution, dynamic range, and linearity (the PSB Image B25 comes to mind) than was even considered possible 20 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, a $479 speaker today would have been $266 in 1988. What could you have bought for $266 in 1988? Not much. I got a pair of ADS L1090 small towers in 1987 when they listed at $1100/pair. Adjusted for inflation that's $2100 today. For about that you can now get a pair of Mirage OMD-15s. They're physically the same size, are 6dB more efficient (equivalent to quadrupling your amp power), have more uniform in-room response, have nearly a full octave more bass extension, and can handle nearly 100 wpc more power. That's nearly 10dB greater dynamic range. |
04-20-09: Unsound
Johnny, perhaps I was thinking beyond budget speakers, I'm not at all convinced that "more efficient" speaker designs sound better. I can give you examples of some of todays speakers that are harder to drive, and have less bass response and cost much money than their predecessors. I've had low sensitivity speakers and higher sensitivity speakers, and all other things being equal, I'll take the more sensitive ones. It's like quadrupling your amp power and doubling your dynamic range. But you raise a really important point: If some manufacturers' speakers perform worse and cost more money, they're ripping their customers off or have a bad business model. But there are upscale speakers that are improving as well, perhaps at high cost, but are improved just the same. The Wilson Maxx 3 and latest version of the Alexandria are stunning, and are more coherent than their predecessors. I also like what Sonus Faber is doing as well as JM Labs. BTW, you have no idea as to where I go and how often I do. Ahh, I was just goofing off, and had a goofy emoticon to prove it: :-0 |
Well, Unsound, why not name some names? Who's making speakers that perform worse and cost more? I don't doubt your word that they exist; I just don't know anything about them.
What I've been amazed at is how the entry-level and mid-level of audiophile speakers is performing at levels previously held only by the most expensive gear. I already mentioned the $479 PSB Image B25. The PSBs continue to improve in dynamics and bass extension (while retaining that flat, smooth frequency response) as you move up their price/quality scale into the $4K-$6K range.
Hell, a recent Absolute Sound had a gush review over the Cerwin-Vega CLS-215 speakers, some floorstanding 3-ways with two 15" woofers that weigh about 115 lbs each. are 92dB efficient at 1KHz, and can absorb up to 500 watts. And they sound good, scale down, and do human voice particularly well. The ultimate frat-house speaker for about $1K/pair. The review mentioned that these speakers are not only *very* listenable for acoustic and small group music, they also have the kind of dynamic range you usually have to pay very big bucks to get.
Ten years ago, when someone came to me for a sub<$1K speaker recommendation, I had to scour the internet to find them a deal. Now there are so many decent $1K speakers I don't know where to start--PSB, Paradigm, Mirage, Revel, Infinity, Totem Rainmaker, JM Labs, B&W, Magnepan..., stand-mounted, columns, panels... |
Martyk1, thanks for the enlightening response.
I think this trend to create flagship products has had the benefit of improving speaker performance from the top to the bottom of the line. The rapid improvements in quality of speakers in the $500 to $2000 range corresponds with the recent history of cost-no-object speaker development.
To improve the breed, someone has to make an all-out assault on the state-of-the-art. For a long time, David Wilson had that quest (and market) to himself. But as you pointed out, we now have many such products from Mbl, Focal, Hansen, Magico, YG; and 5-figure flagship speakers from others you named. B&W's Nautilus belongs in there somewhere as well. Each has contributed something that has been of general use to the industry--dispersion patterns, driver materials, magnet assemblies, cabinet construction, modularity, and even in-room setup.
I liken the 6-figure all-out assaults to auto racing: ultimate performance and a very high ratio of R&D to final product cost because there are so few units made and sold to offset development. However, this process creates a trickle-down benefit. Most of these speaker makers have several lines of speakers, and even the lowest priced ones make use of some of the design features developed for the flagship.
About the only companies named that *don't* trickle down much are YG and Wilson. They build to only one standard, whereas Focal, Revel, Snell, B&W, and others have very affordable lines of speakers. Even there, Wilson's development has benefited the state of speaker making as a whole. Although he may not have invented many of these design constructs, he certainly popularized them--time alignment, the virtues of a well-built mini-monitor (WATT), inert cabinet materials, and even room setup. |
04-22-09: Shadorne
However, I think you are mistaken about box speakers being systematically a problem due to the "box". There is design, and then there is implementation. The $460,000 Saleen supercar uses a (gasp!) pushrod engine. Grado makes a wood-bodied $2500 moving iron cartridge. Grandprix Audio makes a $20,000 (w/o arm) S'phile Class A direct drive turntable. Every design concept has its strengths and weaknesses. How a design is implemented to mitigate those weaknesses and exploit the inherent strengths determines how successful the final product is. Therefore, categorically dismissing a given design approach may cause you to miss out on some really good products. |
04-26-09: Mrtennis
i was not trying to single out the magnepans, although their latest prototype might be something special. It is. I heard 'em in February. i have not heard them, my impression is based upon reading and talking to someone who was at the SHOW this past january. I sure hope Magnepan commits to the development and production of these. You're in for a treat. The smaller panels seem to overcome my one problem with larger Maggies--they're a little slow and not as transparent as some kinds of panels. These little panels are very fast, however, producing some of the best transients I've ever heard from any kind of speaker at any price. At the open house I was at (described here), the Wilson Maxx 3's made the 20.1s sound slow and a little thick; the mini-panels did not suffer compared to the Wilsons on that score. |
04-27-09: Chashas1
Ah, you initially said woofer, mrtennis, not bass panel, so I assumed cone. They'd still have to come a long way to impress me. It also seemed the bigger they got in the old days the less I liked them. Pardon me for injecting myself into this conversation, but Magnepan calls them woofers. That doesn't disqualify them from being bass panels as well. As for the size, they are not as large as the bass panels of the 20.1, but are a downscaled version of the same. As I said before, the Magnepan woofer and small panels sound faster than the 20.1s. Integration between the woofer(s) and panels couldn't be better. Transient response is about identical, and here's the kicker: the woofer can respond up to 7 Khz, so blending with the satellites is easy. It doesn't start beaming or running out of response at 125 Hz like a regular woofer. It's the most seamless-sounding separate woofer/sat setup I've ever heard. |
